Subj : Re: laptops
To   : Nightfox
From : Tracker1
Date : Wed Nov 04 2020 16:12:22

On 11/4/2020 9:23 AM, Nightfox wrote:
 >> True, but modern virtualization hooks in the processors helps a bit if
 >> you're emulating for the same architecture... that said, Mac switching
 >> to ARM won't really help x86 software in emulation much.
 >
 > That's one thing that confuses me a bit about Apple's decision to 
switch to ARM for their Macs.  Since they switched to Intel, one of 
their big selling points is now they can run both Mac OS and Windows 
software natively.  Boot Camp allows dual-booting between Mac OS and 
Windows, but you can also run Windows in a virtual machine relatively 
fast within Mac OS.  I imagine you could also install an x86-based Linux 
distro on it if you wanted to.
 >
 > At the same time, I've heard Microsoft has a version of Windows 10 
that runs on ARM and runs desktop software.  I've heard it also has a 
32-bit Intel x86 emulator so you can run Intel x86 desktop software on 
ARM with it.
I think the biggest difference is Apple experience in-house with 
designing their own chips has improved dramatically with iOS devices and 
they have the confidence to have their own designs now.  Not to mention 
moves to increasingly lock down hardware.

As to emulating windows, or running windows apps, I'm not sure if they 
will work with MS towards better support, or drop the idea altogether 
since core MS apps have Apple and Online versions, and there's likely 
less use of Windows emulation these days compared to even a few years ago.

For developers on Mac devices, Docker/Linux emulation is probably much 
more common and aarch64 support on Linux is pretty close to x86-64 
levels of general support at this point.  Even MS is headed this 
direction in extended support for WSL2/Docker integration being top 
notch, and would expect similar from Apple in the future.

-- 
Michael J. Ryan
tracker1 +o Roughneck BBS
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